


3 times louis tomlinson didn’t smile and one time he did

by a_gently_faded_rainbow



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25198033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gently_faded_rainbow/pseuds/a_gently_faded_rainbow
Summary: Half character study, half pure angst, half me mocking my past self for hating 1D, half mocking my current self for writing fics about real people, and half my clear lack of knowledge about these people because i wrote this for a friend, and that’s the number of half cups you need to make muffins baby!! anyway read if you want to cry and then smile
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	3 times louis tomlinson didn’t smile and one time he did

Louis’ lying in the tour bus, exhausted and sweaty, with Harry monologuing about the show, about Liam always calling first shower, on and on. While Louis ends shows a proper mess, Harry’s like an excitable puppy afterwards. Hand curled around a mug of coffee, his tirade turns to Zayn. 

“-And I mean where does he go? Off at odd hours, we’re all back here right, and he’s just out making rumours for the rest of us! You’re the only one of us who’s really upstanding. ‘I’m Louis, king of Britain. Everybody listen to the managers.” 

Harry’s grinning, clearly expecting some sort of reaction. Louis doesn’t grace him with anything, just puts in an earbud and pretends he doesn’t see Harry’s face fall, pretends he doesn’t care.   
He does a lot of that, trying to ignore the tangled mess of feelings about the band, and the boys, and mostly just Harry. 

Harry’s perpetually messy hair, clumsy limbs curled around themselves, black coffee drenched in sugar, the smell of it taking over the bus. Fingers tapping to music even when there isn’t any, the clean and polished British boy band act slipping off his back like silk after interviews, replaced with a sixteen year old kid, all cursing and laughter and sarcasm, but kind nonetheless. 

He doesn’t smile at Harry enough. He doesn’t smile enough period. It’s shit in America, shit on tour, shit in general, and he can feel the music slipping through his fingers, sand he can’t hold onto under the pressure of being a 13 year old girl’s sexual awakening. He tries to smile more and hope it reaches his eyes.

\-----------------

Obviously, it gets worse. Lists of rules he keeps in his head written in Harry’s handwriting like a cruel twist of fate everytime the Golden Retriever boy tries to touch him on stage, the same five chords in slightly different order. He can’t stop scrolling through forums of punk rock kids criticizing his band, can’t stop knowing they’re right. 

Harry flips over the side of the bed, hair hanging down so he looks like a troll doll. It’s 2 am, the eyestrain blue of his Tumblr timeline bright in the bus. Too bright, because Harry’s glaring at him. 

“Louis, we’re all worried about you and this is a bit extreme. You’ve got to start sleeping more and worrying less. For my sake if not yours.”

For Harry’s sake. He sets his phone down. 

“Sorry. Just got caught up.”

Harry jumps down, quiet as you can be on the creaky floors, and sits by the bed. 

“Caught up with what?”

“Nothing really.”

Harry picks up his phone, still unlocked, and reads the latest post aloud. 

“Ooh from louisslittleslut73! Awesome start. Let’s see…’Louis looks so unhappy and you can just tell he needs a nice girl to take care of him’-she’s not wrong-’or some help. Honestly, the band would be okay without him and he needs to take care of himself.’ Cool. You like reading this stuff?”

Louis’ voice is small and rough. “No.”

“No. Good. Then why are you doing it? Cause you know she’s wrong, we wouldn’t be okay without you. You’re a part of this band just as much as any of us.”

“Thanks Harry. Sorry I woke you.”

“You didn’t. I couldn’t sleep either. We’ve gotta get out, figure out something new. We could start our own band you know.”

He’d fuck it up like he’s fucked this up, upset the new management until they break Harry too. They’d be good, really good. They harmonize well, like similar styles, but the weight of Louis would bring it down. 

“I don’t think so, Harry. Go on, go back to sleep. You’re young, need your beauty sleep.” 

Louis is particularly good at pulling joy from Harry’s face, however rarely it is found there these days. 

“Right. Be a dick then, but turn your phone off and let us get some sleep.”

Niall mumbles indistinctly from his bunk, close to waking up, and Harry’s back in his bed in the blink of an eye. Louie turns onto his side and stays up until the sun sneaks through the crack in the blackout curtains, 6 am sneaking in. He washes salt from his face and takes a walk. 

\-----------------

Eleanor’s gone, the apartment still smelling of spilled red wine and Vivaldi’s “Fall” fading into “Winter”. She’d made an excuse about the babysitter when he tried to talk to her, and he’s too tired to text, call, email. In the morning. It’s Friday, so morning will end up being 2 pm because he’s tired all the time now, struggling to keep his eyelids open on the late night talk show where they laugh like the world is just fucking dandy and he laughs because he gets paid to. He doesn’t get paid not to, at least. 

He texts his therapist because she said to, cleans up the wine, shuts off the music, falls asleep on the couch. It’s a vaguely grey montage of interviews, appointments, and sleep for the next few months, punctuated by Harry’s music releases. He buys a fish, lets Freddie pick out decorations for the tank, eats cake with him at the park, lets his little kid enthusiasm seep into the blurred photo edges of his existence. He tries to make sure the apartment doesn’t smell of weed when Eleanor comes around, tries to patch together the best pieces of himself for other people like a quilt of lies. He writes that down for future lyrics. 

It’s all so much, to remember dates and times when none of it feels real or important. It adds a soulful air to his song writing, his editor says, and that’s something. He’d trade soulful for smiles, skill for their peppy pop music bullshit and crinkled up eyes, church bell laughter like the beginning of a wedding. He got his divorce, got his after ever after ending to the band. One direction ever forwards, propelled towards disaster by the inevitable combustion of teenage follies. 

He’s getting good at poetry. 

\-----------------

No one around, nothing to do, is a comfort zone for him. Harry, on the other hand, has decided to Facetime him once a day like clockwork, make strange pasta recipes or tin can cookies with radio playing in the background. What had been brief conversations at the beginning, Harry putting in all the effort while Louis relearned having conversations, has turned into late nights together, Harry becoming almost a second therapist. 

He’s outgrown Louis, taller, stronger but more mature too. Harry listens well, asks the right questions, laughs with ease. Though they’re both trying to be smart, social distance except when they have to be celebrities, Louis doesn’t say no when Harry offers to come over in the days before the reunion.

It would all be better if Louis had woken up with his alarm, had any semblance of cleanliness in his flat. Eighteen minutes before Harry’s supposed to come over, and he’s barely managed to dress himself, rushing around collecting empty cups and takeout containers like he’s a teenager again. Harry, a nuisance as always, is early, and so Louis answers the door in jeans and an undone flannel with his hair a greasy mess and an ashtray in his hand, a sharp contrast to Harry’s floral shorts, casual white t-shirt. 

Louis must look wild, because Harry coughs, chokes, and doesn’t stop coughing. In his floundering attempt to help, Louis spills ashes down his front and onto the welcome mat, and they both dissolve into giggles because it is perfectly, heartbreakingly, like old times. He gets Harry a glass of water, and they curl up on the couch together. 

“Your flat came with a fish?”

“That...is my fish.”

“You’ve got a fish.”

“His name is Caillou.”

“You named your fish, the fish that you own, after a children’s show.”

“Hey! Freddie named him.”

“Right, you have a child and a fish. Two perfectly normal things we would all have expected you to have.”

“And what have you got?”

“Artistic integrity.”

“Low blow! I have artistic integrity.”

“Only joking. You know I did like your album.”

“I liked yours. It’s what made me think of the fish.”

Harry’s grin could power all of London, thousand watt voltage. “‘Adore You’. Like it?”

“Yeah. Who is--”

“Louis if you finish that sentence, I’ll have to assume you’re brain dead.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s fairly obvious that it’s about you, that half the damn album is about you, that half my life’s been about you.”

“I hardly think--”

“I’m not done. You want to ignore that we ever flirted, did anything, had anything, fine. I’m here for you no matter what, you know that. But don’t you even pretend not to know I care. This fish?” Harry jabs his finger against the glass. “You got it cause of my song, that I wrote cause of you. Sit with that.”

“You came over to yell at me then.”

“Pine over you actually, despite the fact I could have half of Britain in bed with me if I weren’t such a fool.”

“I assumed you already had, you and your half done up shirts.”

Harry snorts, which is fair play because Louis himself is half done up, half done in general and it’s all too much and Louis can feel tears welling, his nostrils flaring as he tries not to let them fall. 

“Hey, hey then. Louis. Only joking. I should stop that. I know it’s not your fault. The last bit was uncalled for though. Just sit down and stop looking like I’ve killed your fish.”

Louis sits. 

“I didn’t mean half the world away Louis. Come and sit next to me.”

He wouldn’t do it, really he wouldn’t, because he has self control, but Harry reaches over, and his nails are painted chipped lilac, his hands soft except for the rough calluses on his fingertips, the faint scar on his thumb from one of the venues, loose nails catching against his hand and leaving behind a memory, a legacy. 

He drenches Harry’s shirt in tears, can’t stop saying sorry into the soft fabric, Harry crying above him, more composed but nonetheless sad, because they’re stupid and Louis’s selfish. 

“What would we have named the band, Harry?”

“What?”

“Right before the end, you said we could have a band together. What would we have called it?”

“Sunset swimmers. You remember that pool in Idaho, how we were lucky enough to be alone, and no one else came, just the two of us, and you wouldn’t stop smiling, and I just remember thinking I would’ve done anything for you. You were so angry, before the end, and I didn’t know how to fix it.”

“Harry. You couldn’t have fixed it. You--we were kids. All of us. There wasn’t anything we could’ve done alright?”

“I know. Sometimes I think about what we could’ve done, all of us, if we’d been a little braver and gotten new management, new lyrics, something real soft and acoustic.”

“You’ve done that now.”

“You haven’t.”

“There’s a lot I haven’t done.”

“Can I meet him? Freddie? He’s such a big thing you’ve done.”

“I’ve done his mum. Freddie’s all his own man.”

“Louis Tomlinson, making a dirty joke. As I live and breathe.”

“He’d like you. He paints his nails too, with his mum. Red.”

“Red. Maybe we could match.”

“What color do I get?”

“Oh you’re joining us huh? We’ll have to start small, work our way up to the big stuff. Maybe taupe? Sky blue? Gray?”

“Could do a rainbow.”

“We could.” Harry brushes hair from his forehead, kisses him there. “We could paint ourselves a lot of colours Lou.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3 feel free to dm me on tumblr @disastroids to rant, chat, or ask why i wrote this. i don’t have answers, but i do have love and tea


End file.
